


Rag and Bone

by Missy



Category: Carrie - All Media Types, Carrie - Stephen King
Genre: Comes Back Wrong, Dark, Desperation, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Horror, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Resurrection, Summoning, Summoning Circles, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 13:51:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16119791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Carrie doesn't know what she's doing, she only hopes that what she's doing will work.





	Rag and Bone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



Kneeling in the burnt-out basement, the world having cratered in around her, Carrie did what she could to salvage the situation. 

She started at the head.

Anointing it with sacred oils kept carefully hidden in the back of her mother’s closet – for unction, for the deepest of prayers - Carrie mumbled the words she could recall as she knelt beside the broken, leftover pieces of her mother. There were holy beings to be called into the play of this unholy act. Washed her mother's feet and laid myrrh at her neck. Dried herbs upon her belly. A crucifix at her breast. Fresh blood poured down her throat. Jesus, Mary, and Damien.

Carrie knew she was acting half out of hope, half out of instinct. She settled the candles against the blackened rubble and lit them, framing her mother’s face. She looked one more time at the book that balanced prayer and curses, hopes and damnation.

The words spilled from her lips until she felt a hand clutch her ankle and screamed, scrambling away, eyes bulging from her head.

The nightgown-wearing woman was her mother, but not her mother. Her mouth hung open at the corners like an overfilled plastic garbage bag. Her nose, mashed flat, trickled blood from the nostril. The eyes were glassy and uncomprehending. She didn’t say anything. Made no violent motion. Said nothing about how Jesus would not suffer her evil existence. Who was this Margaret, without her fire and brimstone preaching? Without her coddling guilt? Without her everlasting fear that a lack of submission to every single word in the Bible? Was she a demon herself now, newly born and confused?

She did not seem to know, and did not move to dispel Carrie’s confusion. But still, the girl’s heart still lifted with the shifting of her expression. She could not say what the look in her mothers’ eyes was – oafish curiosity? Fear? Awe of a new God?

But Carrie did understand one thing. 

It was the first time her mother had ever looked at her without hatred in her eyes.


End file.
